The evolution of the iPhone in 7 charts

The iPhone 7 hits stores on Friday, Sept. 16, but potentially record-breaking demand means many customers may have to wait until November to nab their preferred model. Given the phone has largely the same form factor as the last two models — and this time, no headphone jack — what’s the deal with all the hype? One possibility is all the under-the-hood improvements, from a better camera to a faster processor. During Apple’s announcement, marketing chief Phil Schiller trotted out his familiar graphics performance chart. The iPhone 7 blows away its predecessors, fully 240 times faster than the original handset. SpecOut — an electronics research site from Graphiq — set out to make the same chart for six other key iPhone metrics: thinness, battery life, camera quality, display sharpness, RAM and price. Do the iPhone 7’s improvements in these categories match the significant step up in graphics performance? And how has the iPhone line in general changed over time?* *The iPhone SE — a smaller, more affordable phone Apple released between major updates — has been removed from three of the below visualizations to keep the focus on the overall trend for the flagship devices. 2. Thinness If there’s one thing Apple’s known for, it’s thin devices. Some iPhones have been so slender, in fact, that Apple has been mocked for prioritizing beauty over more functional attributes like battery life. The spec sheet, however, suggests Apple has been less obsessed with thinness since the iPhone 6. Apple iPhone Phone Depth Over Time… [Read full story]